BATON ROUGE -- With three primary legs of Gov. Bobby Jindal's education agenda set for debate -- and votes, according to Capitol power players -- in the House Education Committee, the Louisiana Capitol is already abuzz this morning.

AP Photo/Gerald HerbertGov. Bobby Jindal will testify today before the House Education Committee on his K-12 overhaul proposal.

Hundreds of teachers and school employees have gathered on the Capitol front steps. Parking along the periphery of the property is full. And lines have formed in various lobbies and at building entrances, as onlookers await the few coveted seats in the Chairman Steve Carter's committee room.

The proceedings will be broadcast online here (look for the TV icon next to "House Education," under the heading "Today at the Louisiana Capitol), with a scheduled 8:30 a.m. start time. Carter, R-Baton Rouge, said yesterday that he plans to work until the full House convenes at 4 p.m., then return to work in the evening, after the chamber adjourns for the day.

Here are a few outstanding questions and issues of policy, politics and process as lawmakers take up an unabashedly ambitious overhaul of teacher tenure rules and proposed expansions of charter schools and the use of public money to pay private school tuition.

The governor will testify: Jindal is scheduled to testify at 9 a.m. Governors in the past have testified for their signature initiatives, though Jindal has not done so nearly as often as his immediate predecessor, Kathleen Blanco.

How many bills actually will get votes? Carter says he wants to vote on all three bills: House Bills 933, 974 and 976. But whatever one's policy preferences, they are undoubtedly complex pieces of legislation, particularly a 46-page bill dealing with charter schools and vouchers and a 15-page plan for new hiring and firing rules for teachers and superintendents.

Jindal has traveled the state for months offering an outline of his agenda, and he fleshed out the proposals with some details several weeks before the session's Monday opening. But teachers association leader Steve Monaghan noted that the actual bills were not filed until March 3. With the complexities at hand, Monaghan said, "You can't have a legitimate debate about that in eight hours."

Chairman Carter in the spotlight: Carter served on the Education Committee last term, initially as a minority member, then in the majority, when the GOP tide turned in the House. He comes to the job after expressing a particular interest in education policy, but he has made clear that he views his role these days as shepherd for the governor's agenda. How will he balance the limited time today between members asking questions about the bills and the public - both paid lobbyists and citizens at large - who want to testify about particular provisions?

Amendments: Word spread around the Capitol last night that there were scores of amendments dropped in advance of the hearing today. No indication yet on how many of them are substantive. But every significant policy change can be subject to its own long debate - or, at the very least, give opponents an opening to talk longer and ask more questions.

Charter schools vs. voucher advocates: Caroline Roemer, who leads the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, said it is reasonable to assume "some natural tension" in an "education reform" movement that is anything but monolithic. The key question: Do charter schools - which are still publicly financed operations - view vouchers as a threatening competition? In short, Roemer said, "No. We welcome competition for the best principals, best teachers and students."

Management accountability for private schools: While Roemer said she embraces competition; she added that the Jindal administration should pursue stricter financial accountability measures for private schools that may accept public money. "We want to share some of the lessons that we learned in the charter movement," she said, giving a nod toward some failed charter schools that weren't up to the management task. The key issue is whether to allow start-up schools to qualify for the money or whether to require a school to have been established for a certain period of time before the state will direct voucher money to the institution.

Testing in private schools: The Jindal plan calls for testing only voucher students, but not all private school students. That means the participating private schools would not get publicly reported letter grades like charter schools and traditional public schools. Roemer said she's fine with that. She added, though, that the plan is short on consequences for the private school if the voucher students aren't testing well.

Danny Loar, lobbyist for the Catholic bishops, said the church is not only fine with Jindal's proposed testing model, but absolutely does not want the schools to have to alter their existing testing model to conform with the state. Catholic schools already dominate in the pilot Orleans voucher program and are expected to provide the overwhelming number of spots that would open if the statewide plan becomes law. Loar noted that Catholics schools nationwide already test their students - using the Stanford achievement test and the Terra Nova test - with the results reported on a diocesan basis. That provides public accountability, he said.

Will some of the governor's allies push against some of the details? The accountability question is a quiet but persistent concern among some business and good-government groups whose leaders generally support the governor's approach. Several lawmakers have said they are aware of those groups - such as the Council for a Better Louisiana and the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry - pushing for some changes but doing so in private. Now that the issue has reached the public stage, the question is whether anyone from those groups take their positions public.

Will the Rev. Gene Mills testify? The Louisiana Family Forum leader is a quiet force in the Capitol and has long backed the school-choice movement generally, particularly ideas like vouchers, including for students taught at home.

Democratic Minority Leader John Bel Edwards: The Amite Democrat concedes he doesn't have the votes to override whatever the governor wants. But he said he will use his time today, in part, to "highlight the legal fiction" of the governor's financing plan for vouchers. Using the Minimum Foundation Program, which the Constitution seemingly directs toward public schools, to finance private schools is illegal on its face, Edwards argues, a position that the teachers unions and many local school boards agree with. "It is an affront to the rule of law," Edwards said.

How much detail on tenure/evaluations? The Legislature in Jindal's first term agreed to changes that tie teacher evaluations to student performance. That program is an anchor of his tenure overhaul, but the new system isn't fully implemented yet. Many teachers still have questions about exactly how it works. How will the state propose to test kindergarten teachers? How will transfer students -- in and out -- affect "value-added" assessments, i.e. what baseline will be used to measure whether the student improved over the course of a year?